You will be making many new friends this first year - this will make you not want to live at home. That said, there's nothing to say you can't decide to find a place nearer campus to rent if you change your mind, which brings me to my main and most important point:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FREE MONEY.

Keep one eye on your cash. Do not be fooled by banks offering you seemingly limitless overdrafts and free shit you don't need. Your loan cheque is not a license to spunk away £$£ on kebabs and beer - even though that's an awesome thing to do. Don't put up with landlord's bullshit. Party down, but make sure you're doing it only so much as your wallet allows.

Which Uni is it, don't waste to much money in freshers week. Don't expect too much of freshers week, mine wasnt that great at least. Don't settle for friendships with people you don't like but who are on your course or you live with (if you move out.)

seriously phone up and beg them for a place in halls.
you'll have a great time, just don't think everyone's freshers week friendlyness will last. as long as you're true to yourself then you'll end up sorting the wheat from the chafe eventually. to be honest i fucking loved the first few months of uni cos i met my girlfriend (now of 4 years) on the first day of halls of residence. rock and roll.

imagine that living at home would have made my Uni experience quite, quite horrible. The walk of shame back to my mum's house would have been just plain wrong.

Advice: just have fun. Possibly get a part-time job in a boozer to meet more people/earn some cash and have a good night without actually spunking loads of cash up the walls. Get to know the guy in the local record shop so that when you go in on Monday morning he can recommend stuff to you that you might like but might not have heard. Learn to love Lambrini.

And i will be living in halls, read about all the pranks that people play on each other, i dont mind half of them because they would just be funny and the balloons all packed into your room, that one would be a nice surprise. But the super gluing the door shut, if i was in there and then i would have a right panic after a while and try and climb out the window.

Did any of you lot do pranks or get pranks done to you at uni??

Also is there anything which you would suggest is essential, but we may not think about because you only realise its essential when you're there??

There was a guy on the site who said him and his mates went on top of one of the buildings and chucked a dummy person thing down so it scared people and they all came running over gathering around it, then pelted them with water bombs and water pistols. I thought this was well thought out and rather shocking but funny :)